


When I'm With You

by Purplechimera



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, M/M, Mystery, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 17:56:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19361803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Purplechimera/pseuds/Purplechimera
Summary: My life is perfectly orderly. I wake up at six every morning, make myself hard boiled eggs, toast, and coffee. I shower, get dressed, and go to work. At work, I sit at my desk, edit the documents my secretary puts on the left side of my desk, and move them to the right, where she takes them away. Twice a week I have a scheduled staff meeting. Then I go home, make myself dinner, read a book, and go to bed.This has been my life for over a decade now, with very little change. My office is bigger now, because I got promoted a couple years back. Sometimes I get wild and buy asparagus instead of green beans. I like my life. Everything is orderly and expected. There are no surprises.Except for you.





	When I'm With You

My life is perfectly orderly. I wake up at six every morning, make myself hard boiled eggs, toast, and coffee. I shower, get dressed, and go to work. At work, I sit at my desk, edit the documents my secretary puts on the left side of my desk, and move them to the right, where she takes them away. Twice a week I have a scheduled staff meeting. Then I go home, make myself dinner, read a book, and go to bed. 

 

This has been my life for over a decade now, with very little change. My office is bigger now, because I got promoted a couple years back. Sometimes I get wild and buy asparagus instead of green beans. I like my life. Everything is orderly and expected. There are no surprises.

 

Except for you.

 

~

 

I was nineteen, working in the university library. Madame Pince had mercifully assigned me to weeding the archives, after I had a small break down the previous semester because people kept interrupting my desk work. For three glorious weeks, my work was uninterrupted. I categorized, I organized, I worked in nearly complete silence.

 

At 22h47 (it was a Thursday), I was just reshelving a copy of the head law professor’s dissertation when the door to the archives burst open, then slammed shut. The change in air pressure caused several books on my table to fly open. You pressed your back against the door, chest heaving against your tight black t-shirt, and ran fingers through your long hair while your eyes settled on me.

 

“Hi,” your voice was breathy and gravelly and I knew in that moment you would bring nothing but trouble.

 

I wiped my hands on my tweed trousers and did my best impersonation of Madame Pince. “Can I help you?”

 

I knew it didn’t work, because no one has  _ ever _ looked Madame Pince up and down the way your eyes looked at me. 

 

“There are so many things you could help me with,” you muttered, but by the time I’d processed what you meant, you were glancing over your shoulder out the tiny window in the door. You slid down to the floor, stretching out your legs (I still maintain it’s because there’s no way to cross your legs when you wear jeans that tight). “Mind if I hang out a bit? I’m, ah, avoiding trouble.”

 

My watch beeped. 22h50. Ten minutes until I left, and went back to my tiny studio flat and my tea and the university newsletter editing. “Fine. But please be quiet. I am working.” I turned back to my table.

 

I didn’t see my flat for two days. 

 

The next thing I solidly remember was stumbling back to my flat around five on Sunday morning with your arm wrapped around my ribs. You dumped me on the sofa, made me drink two glasses of water, kissed me breathless, and left.

 

When I woke up again, the afternoon sun was glaring through my tiny window and, for the first time in my life, my phone battery was completely dead. I plugged it in while I made tea and dug around in my cabinets for anything to stop the pounding in my head. By the time the battery was charged enough to unplug it, I was on my second cup of tea and half-panicked about the images in my head.

 

There were hundreds of photos in my phone gallery. Many of them were selfies I had taken (more than I’d ever taken before in my  _ entire life _ ), but most of them were photos of you. You, laughing and holding out a beer toward the camera. A selfie of us, standing on the hood of a blue sports car in a car park. You, leaning against a bridge railing blowing smoke rings over the river. 

 

I don’t know how long I sat there on the sofa, piecing together my fragmented memories with the photos on my phone. In an attempt to gain some kind of control, I had scrolled all the way back to Thursday night, and gone through them chronologically. The last one was a video. The still showed you and me, standing on the sidewalk in front of my building. The time stamp was Sunday, 4:39am.

 

I hit play.

 

“Come on, Remus! You need to document this! For posterity.” Your arm swung around my shoulders and the camera swooped up, focusing on our faces. “Hello probably-hung-over-Remus of the future! I am recording this-” 

 

I groaned and buried my face in your shoulder. You kissed me on the forehead.

 

“I am recording this because you need to know that you are going to be okay. Your head is going to feel like it’s splitting open for most of the day, but by Monday morning you’ll be fine again, especially if you drink a lot of water. I had  _ no idea _ a swotty librarian in knitted jumpers could be so much fun!” You nosed my head until I looked up at you, and the camera sunk slightly as we locked eyes. “I had a hell of a weekend, Remus. That’s saying something, coming from me. C’mon, let’s get you to bed.”

 

The film ended.

 

I don’t know how many times I watched it. I stopped when a text message popped up.

 

**Sirius Black (14h27):** how are you feeling?

**Remus (14h28):** are you real?

**Sirius Black (14h30)** : XD haven’t you looked through your gallery?

**Remus (14h31)** Photographs can be doctored

**Sirius Black (14h34)** You’re much more fun IRL

**Remus (14h57)** I am not doing that again

**Sirius Black (14h59)** I will never coerce you into anything, Remus.

 

Madame Pince forgave me for not showing up to work on Friday. Seemed to think that I had fallen ill and forgotten to inform her. That summer, I got an internship with a news magazine-the same one I still work for.

 

~

 

I was twenty-two. You texted me every month, on the third day, but I hadn’t actually seen you since that painful Sunday morning. 

 

**Sirius Black:** Happy June! How are you?

**Remus:** I’m fine. How are you?

**Sirius Black:** I miss you

**Remus:** no, you don’t.

 

Our text history repeats, with very little variation, for over three years. It fit nicely into the order of my life, so I didn’t fight it much. But then you knocked on my door on Monday night, in the middle of February, and I was already in my pajamas but there were still snowflakes on your eyelashes that reflected in your silver irises. 

 

You weren’t running, this time, but I could hear your breath rattling against the fabric of your rainbow scarf, and without thinking I stepped back and allowed you into my flat.

 

“You haven’t changed at all,” you said, shedding your outdoor layers onto the hooks by the door. “You have the same teapot.”

 

“What’s wrong with my teapot?” I asked, suddenly aware of how repetitive my life was.

 

You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear and smiled that crooked smile that made my insides imitate a pit of snakes. “I missed you.”

 

“No, you didn’t.”

 

You traced your finger down the side of my face, lifting my chin. “It makes me sad to think that you don’t value yourself as much as I do.”

 

It took all of my strength to not get lost in your arms; I still had to close my eyes. “I have work in the morning.”

 

“I promise I will have you back for work in the morning.” Then you twined our fingers together and kissed me.

 

I didn’t drink, this time. Being sober didn’t help my memory at all. You dropped me off at work the next morning, with brand new clothes and an extra large coffee. It didn’t occur to me until that afternoon to look in my phone gallery for more pictures.

 

I made myself wait until I got home to look through my phone. There were more videos, this time. Most of them of me, laughing at you-that’s the only explanation I have of the videos, because I have no memory of ever laughing like that without you there. In fact, it wasn’t until this moment that I realized I hardly ever laugh at all.

 

In the last video, I am standing in the bed of a truck, laughing and trying to untangle a bubble wand from the afro of an extremely tall, mildly irritated looking woman, while a tiny blonde strokes her arm tenderly. The camera spins and focuses on you. Your hair is tied messily on top of your head, and you are wearing gold winged eyeliner. 

 

“Remus, I know you’re probably irritated with me right now, watching this, but I made sure no one slipped you any alcohol, and as soon as the stores open I’m going to take you to buy a new suit because the one you have is so out of fashion my gran wouldn’t wear it.”  You point at the camera right as my jaw clenches. “Don’t get offended, Remus. I know you like your comforts. It’s not going to be Armani or anything.” 

 

My stomach flips over as you grin and wink. Then the camera spins back around, and I am holding the bubble wand triumphantly in the air, and the girls are kind of hitting each other but also snogging. I let out what can only be described as a whoop. 

 

“I know you like your comforts, Remus,” comes your voice from behind the camera. “But you are so alive, like this. I hope you can take some of that with you when you go back to your books.” 

 

I jump out of the bed of the truck just as the video ends.

 

~

 

I was twenty-eight. We’d started texting almost daily, and every three months you showed up at my door on the first Saturday night and returned me to my flat the next morning. In the aftermath, on those Sunday afternoons, I would scroll through my phone, reliving the night before. Sometimes we went out-dancing, to comedy clubs, exploring public parks in the middle of the night. Sometimes you rearranged all the furniture in my flat and made us pretend we were on safari. 

 

For five years, that was how it was. For five years, I put on my pajamas on a Saturday night, only to be forced out of them within the hour by a hurricane with tattoos and skinny jeans. Then, on the first Saturday of December when I was twenty-eight, there was no knock on the door. I didn’t even realize until I’d finished my book and glanced up at the clock. 

 

I checked our messages, and after scrolling back through them, I realized that we never actually scheduled these meet-ups, and we never explicitly talked about them afterward. There were references-little flickers of proof that my memories were not completely deceitful. Four months prior, you sent me a photo of a peach pie you’d ordered, and I know the reason you sent it-and the reason you’d ordered it-is because the prior Saturday we’d been together, I was possessed to wax lyrical about why peach pie is the only fruit pie worth eating.

 

Something I’d never known I’d had an opinion on before that moment.

 

You do that to me. You reach down into my soul with your laughter and your wit and the way you press your lips against my temple, and pull out confidence and thoughts and feelings that I didn’t even know were there.

 

You always text me first. Even once we started texting daily, the first text of the day was always from you. It seemed…forbidden, somehow, for me to reach out. So I waited.

 

And waited.

 

For six months.

 

On Thursday, my new secretary placed my work on the left side of my desk, and I started at the top of the stack. I had three red pens, and one blue one, and I marked and edited for two hours until I picked up an article about you.

 

I didn’t know it was about you, at first. Your name wasn’t anywhere in the article. But all the dates lined up-the days your texts would go radio silent, the Saturday you didn’t knock on my door. And if this article  _ was _ about you, then you’d been in the hospital, and were now under police protection.

 

~

 

I was twenty-nine. I gave up an entire bookshelf in my studio flat to housing articles about your case. I never read them. Every time a new article came across my desk, I made a photocopy and filed it away when I got home. Otherwise, my life continued, ordinarily.

 

Eventually, my secretary noticed. I hired her because she is good with details, after all. Luckily, she assumed I was obsessed because of the same reason as everyone else: linking a minor royal family to a notorious crime syndicate will grab anyone’s attention.

 

I came in to work on Monday to my normal stack of articles to edit, and three binders worth of research on the history of the Black family. I put them at the beginning of my You shelf.

 

Three months later, on a Saturday night, I’d changed into my pajamas and opened my current novel.

 

**Unknown Number (20h18)** : I miss you

**Remus (20h20)** : No, you don’t

 

I stared at my phone for exactly eighteen minutes, but I didn’t get a response. I spent the weekend wondering if it was because it was the wrong number, or because you couldn’t text me back.

 

Or because you were dead.

 

~

 

It was my thirtieth birthday. I don’t generally do much for my birthday, but somewhere along the way, my secretary found out and she brings in a cake every year. It’s a different flavor every year, too. I wonder if she’s trying to figure out which one I like best. For my twenty-ninth birthday, it was caramel. For my thirtieth, chocolate.

 

I hate interrupting my work for coerced birthday parties. Everyone stands awkwardly around the tiny office kitchen, singing happy birthday and then vehemently denying slices of cake so they can sneak back in later without the shame of eating dessert in front of other people. I always know who took one-their articles are sticky. 

 

I saw my secretary attempting to round everyone up, and glanced one more time at my phone. There are five contacts labeled  _ Sirius _ -numbered in order of when you texted me. (I think they were you.) (I hope they were). There hasn’t been a new number for about six months, and you haven’t sent messages from any of the old ones, either.

 

Halfway through a particularly excruciating rendition of “Happy Birthday,” everyone’s phones went off. 

 

_ Breaking News: Jury Returns Guilty Verdict In Landmark Black Case _

 

Our crime reporter didn’t speak-she simply turned heel and headed out the door. An hour later, my secretary brought me an extra large slice of cake, apologizing for the birthday interruptions, as though she had some kind of control over the timing of the jury. 

 

**Unknown Number (14h37)** : I miss you

**Remus (14h38):** no, you don’t

**Sirius-6 (14h39):** Happy Birthday, Remus

 

Chocolate cake is definitely my favorite. 

 

~

 

I am thirty, but it’s summer now. I have received more texts from you in the past three months than the last two years. On Thursday night, I exit the lift to my flat and you are there, leaning against my door as though you did it every day. I stare, suddenly overcome with the feeling that I must be hallucinating.

 

But then you are touching my face, and I can feel your breath on my skin, and I am surrounded by a scent that had lived exclusively in my dreams for three years, pressing my forehead against your shoulder and telling my brain over and over that you are  _ real _ , you’re  _ here _ and you’re  _ alive _ . 

 

“I missed you.”

 

I can’t say my line. I can’t say it because I can see in your eyes that it’s true. I can’t say it because I am overwhelmed with the reality that  _ I  _ missed  _ you _ . I can’t say it because our lips and tongues are tangled together and you fingers are in my hair and my briefcase is on the floor. 

 

I don’t know how long we are there in the hallway-you make me lose track of everything else. But somehow I find my keys and we are stumbling into my flat and you’re laughing at my You Shelf and making tea like you’ve been making my tea for thirty years. 

 

“Are you real?”

 

It’s a stupid question, in the face of your body stretched out on top of mine, tangled up on the sofa. You curl a strand of my hair around your finger and kiss the tip of my nose.

 

“I’m home now. For real.”


End file.
